Hi I'm Grant the Polite Guy and I was homeless for about a year and a half. So much has happened since then. I write here to help bring homeless awareness looking at the world through a homeless person's point of view.

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Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Now I must say I have sat here at least 5 times to write
here and something has always come up from getting a calls to help people to
new news about the BIG BBQ event with the Guinness World Record.

But after today I thought I had to write because it may help
others.

A lot of people don’t know but I don’t work for Buffed
anymore. But that’s okay because I started thinking I’m better helping people
when I’m in the streets. It’s where I talk to people on more of their level
because I’m selling the Big Issue again. So of course if you want to buy a Big
Issue magazine please come see me at Post Office Square.

But right now I want to write about my second day as a Big
Issue Vendor. I went into the city early to just talk to homeless because to be
honest just having someone listening to them is a huge thing for them. Well
there I was talking to 3 people when one of them sort of pulled me aside and
asked if I could talk to her later. I told her I would be around the Post
Office Square all day.

Later she turned up and started talking about how to get
help if she was on the streets. (Lots of talk happened) She ran away from home because
she was grounded by her parents. She had a bad time on the streets over the few
weeks she was homeless, although at first she thought it would be cool. But as
time went on she didn’t want to contact her parents because of fear because she
left home.

I offered to talk to them for her and as you can imagine her
parents were worried. So worried that her mum took time off work to spend her
days looking for her.

The young girl was worried about punishment because of leaving,
when all her parents wanted was her safe and home.

I won’t make this long but I will say I was embarrassed when
the 15-16yr girl thanked me and kissed me on the cheek while the doors closed
on the train for her to go home, to be honest I didn’t know which one felt
better. Her because she could go back home and everything was okay or me
because I helped make it happen. I just wish her and her family all the best. I
will call in a few days just to say hi and see how things are going.

I know that people have asked me to name people I write about.
Are you kidding? Sometimes people hit
hard times and at a low point in life and the last thing they need is someone
saying I read about what happened to you a year ago or whatever the time frame
is.

Now my morning got better. Remember I was just selling my
Big Issue magazines. A guy came up to me as he had done thousands of times but
this time it was different, I knew this guy well because when I was homeless he
was too, the difference was he still was homeless and I guess for him he wasn’t
ready to get on his feet. Now I want to point out that this guy had been
homeless for the last 3 ½ years that I knew about.

He told me, he had been talking to his mum and how he’s an
adult now and it was “time to get on me feet” but he was getting Methadone
because of strong drug use. He’s going to organize to get his Methadone in
Sydney and after talking to him I’m going pay his ticket to go home where his
family want to help him to get back on his feet.

This is a long time coming to help this guy. But really it
was worth waiting for him to want to get on his feet before acting because if I
did something sooner it would have been pushing him into something he didn’t
want to do. Waste of resources if someone doesn’t want the help.

This all happened before 10am. What a morning. WooHoo.

I have wrote in past posts that I’m doing coffee carts to
help people in a huge way. Well let me say I have my first cart ready to go but
the last 2 locations have fell through. Now I have an application for the 3rd
location. I called today to see how that was going because I felt karma must
kick in here because I have helped two people just today. Well the application
is in but the results not back yet. But I do hope it comes through because this
location is busy enough to employ 7 people. That means I get to help 7 people
to get on their feet in a huge way (Accommodation, make-over and things) and
then give them training for full time employment working the coffee carts.

Let’s just hope it comes through. The biggest problem is
that I need the first location so I can say it works and have experience.

I’d like to thank you all for reading my blog and I hope you
all have a great day.

About Me

Hi I Grant the polite guy. I'm a big issue vendor that sells mags in the city. I spend most of my time saying "Have a nice day" to people that walk pass. I would see thousands of people a day and see alot of things that I am happy to share with you. If you stand in one spot long enough you'll see the world come to you.
I hope you enjoy the stories and have a nice day.